[nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get labeled

John G. Heim jheim at math.wisc.edu
Thu Apr 22 22:12:11 UTC 2010


No, the upshot is that sometimes, regulations are good things. Sometimes 
deregulation is a bad thing.

The upshot is that one pillar of conservative thinking, that less government 
is always better, is wrong.





----- Original Message ----- 
From: "qubit" <lauraeaves at yahoo.com>
To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 4:24 PM
Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get labeled


> Very interesting. As one who has a short attention span for finance, 
> unless
> it directly impacts me, I'm impressed.
>
> So actually, the upshot of it was that when republicans and democrats 
> agree
> on something for different reasons, you get disaster???
> Sorry, couldn't resist.  Someone should have called that one though.  It
> seems like someone just wanted to roll dice with other people's money and
> rake in the winnings no matter how it fell out.
> And they're still employed -- at the same jobs...
> --le
> --le
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John G. Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 4:08 PM
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get 
> labeled
>
>
> Huh? I know all about this stuff. But its why I said the government didn't
> *cause* the crisis, it only failed to stop it.
>
> The law you're talking about that was around since the 1930s is called
> "Glass-Steagal". I'm not sure about the spelling. It made banks declare
> themselves either commercial banks or investment banks. A bank couldn't 
> both
> issue mortgages and sell them to investors. So the bank that issued your
> mortgage had to make sure you could pay it back.  That law was repealed
> durning the Clinton administration. Republicans wanted it repealed it
> because they believe deregulating banks would be good for business.
> Democrats wanted it repealed because they believed that it would allow
> people who wouldn't currently qualify for mortgages to get   them.
>
> Soon, banks started selling collections of mortgages  as investments. They
> called them Collateralized Debt Obligations or CDOs. They didn't
> particularly care whether the CDOs were actually good investments or not
> because they made their money on commissions. There's evidence that some 
> of
> these banks knew the CDOs were bad investments because they bought Credit
> Default Swaps (CDSs) on them. A CDS is essentially insurance taken out
> against a bad investment. The only thing is you could buy insurance for 
> many
> times what the investment was worth. In fact, it didn't even have to be 
> your
> own investment. You could buy a CDS betting that somebody else's 
> investment
> would go bad. When the housing bubble burst, the banks were stuck with the
> CDOs or owed on the CDSs. And they couldn't pay. Hence the trillion dollar
> banking crisis.
>
> What I assumed TJC was referring to was the practice of letting banks pick
> their own federal regulators. A lot of these practices aren't implicitly
> covered by the regulations and its up to the regulator to decide whether 
> the
> bank is following the law or not.
> So banks would pick the regulators most likely to let them do what they
> wanted to do.
>
> Actually, its probably not true that repealing Glass-Steagal led to the
> banking crisis. Repealing G-S made CDOs possible but if CDOs didn't exist,
> some other instrament would have been invented to cause the same crisis. 
> The
> same banking crisis occured in Iceland, Ireland, and Estonia and 
> obviously,
> those contries were never covered by G-S. I can explain why some 
> instrament
> had to be invented for bankers to sell but this message is already long
> enough.
>
> The point is that a crisis that results from repealing regulations and/or
> failing to enforce regulations cannot possibly provide evidence that
> regulations are unnecessary. That logic is about as backward as logic can
> get. Its an argument in *favor* of government regulations, not against 
> them.
>
> PS: I didn't have to look any of this stuff up. I already knew it. In 
> fact,
> I'm a little iffy on the spelling of Glass-Steagal. Anyway, I don't think
> its a lot to expect that anyone who has an opinion on these issues should
> know this stuff.
>
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "qubit" <lauraeaves at yahoo.com>
> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 12:17 PM
> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get 
> labeled
>
>
>> You should sometime listen to the report that was on 60 Minutes recently
>> about what really caused the economy to fall. It was a coordinated effort
>> between a few financiers who cooked up a scheme to make it big, pulled
>> strings to get the rules changed that had been in place since the stock
>> market crash of 1929  preventing people from betting on certain assets,
>> the
>> then the sale of a huge number of mortgages to people who couldn't afford
>> them and forming something called a "credit default swap" that would 
>> shift
>> the money around to get it to where certain people wanted it...
>> It was actually a bit above my head as I am a software developer and 
>> can't
>> stand fincial speak. Anyway, it all happened during the Clinton and 
>> Bush43
>> administrations, and very few people actually knew what was going on.
>> This is why I have almost no trust of banks.  Also why I have a problem
>> with
>> the particular stimulus bill that was smashed through Congress when Obama
>> first got in. Remember? No one read it, just voted one way or the other.
>> Now personally, I like Obama, just some people in his confidence I don't
>> like.
>> How can anyone judge anything. You just have to go by your gut.
>> --le
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "John G. Heim" <jheim at math.wisc.edu>
>> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 11:54 AM
>> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get
>> labeled
>>
>>
>> Holy cow, I keep hearing this argument and each time I just become more
>> boggled. How in the world can someone argue that a banking crisis
>> resulting
>> from poorly enforced government regulations proves that we don't need
>> those
>> regulations? Its to ridiculous for words.
>>
>> If you claim that the banking crisis came about because the government
>> failed to enforce its own regulations, that doesn't show that we don't
>> need
>> the regulations. In fact, it quite clearly demonstrates how *much* we 
>> need
>> them.
>>
>> Saying capitalism didn't fail is like saying the Titanic didn't sink. It
>> was
>> just that an iceberg got in the way. Yes, capitalism did fail. Government
>> also failed but what it failed at was keeping capitalism from failing.
>>
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "T. Joseph Carter" <carter.tjoseph at gmail.com>
>> To: "NFB Talk Mailing List" <nfb-talk at nfbnet.org>
>> Sent: Thursday, April 22, 2010 3:07 AM
>> Subject: Re: [nfb-talk] blind and wanting to improve things, not get
>> labeled
>>
>>
>>> Notably, most of the fraud that people blame on the "money crowd" that
>>> caused the financial debacle was the result of about three large firms,
>>> who were basically paying the government to not do proper oversight,
>>> combined with the government's own socialized mortgage industry which 
>>> was
>>> operating ridiculously.
>>>
>>> Capitalism didn't fail, government and private corruption failed.
>>>
>>> A bunch of blind people debating it on a mailing list aren't going to
>>> suddenly find the magic pill to fix that problem, because none exists.
>>> We
>>> do have several recessions and a couple of depressions to look at for
>>> what
>>> did and didn't work, but even those things that did work are not a magic
>>> pill.  There are still bad times to suffer through.  The remedies that
>>> work just make the bad times go away faster.
>>>
>>> I think we're nearing the end of the useful debate on the topic of
>>> liberal
>>> vs. conservative vs. party affiliation on this list.  It's clear to me
>>> that Ryan's list has merit because there are more people in line with it
>>> than its target audience probably thought.  I think that says what need
>>> be
>>> said on the matter.
>>>
>>> Joseph
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 21, 2010 at 07:29:24PM -0500, David Andrews wrote:
>>>>Yes, the government wastes some money, but so does private industry,
>>>>small
>>>>business, and everybody else.  No process is perfect, there will be some
>>>>waste, fraud, and everything else in any process.  Look at the financial
>>>>debacle we are just coming out of.  I don't think government is any
>>>>better, or worse at running things as anybody else.  The money crowd
>>>>wants
>>>>to be left alone, until they mess up terminally, then they want the
>>>>government to step in, no strings attached.
>>>>
>>>>Dave
>>>>
>>>>At 01:25 PM 4/21/2010, you wrote:
>>>>>Hello-
>>>>>I'm just going to put my two cents in here. I think that when the
>>>>>government does stuff, it ends up swallowing up a lot of money that is
>>>>>wasted. I have spent several months applying for jobs in the federal
>>>>>government and it has been a bit of a comic sketch. At the same time,
>>>>>we have people in our society for whom we need to care, and the fact
>>>>>is that any point in time, most people end up in that position.
>>>>>Ideally, we would privately take care of this on our own- people
>>>>>within a community would rise up and put together their own education
>>>>>system for their kids and for all of them, we would help people out
>>>>>with food when they needed it, doctors and therapists would take on a
>>>>>few patients and clients pro bono at any one time. But until people
>>>>>choose to do that over buying that brand new car instead of continuing
>>>>>to drive it even though it is no longer the latest and greatest, we
>>>>>need to have the government programs on which to fall back. That
>>>>>doesn't even address the fact that certain communities have a deficit
>>>>>of such resources.
>>>>>
>>>>>At my own church, I am in charge of organizing local community service
>>>>>activities. We have a solid core of people who give generously of
>>>>>their time and energy and money, but there are others who are very
>>>>>much occupied by the things in their own lives and they just don't
>>>>>really contribute to anything. Fortunately, most will give to others
>>>>>in some form, but there are a lot of causes and people out there to
>>>>>give to. I am personally in my mid 20's and my peers are a notoriously
>>>>>self-centered population. I know some people who meet that discription
>>>>>and others who do not. Honestly, I don't know what you would need to
>>>>>do in order to try and meet the needs of others. However, as a person
>>>>>with my masters in counseling and with a lot of personal experience
>>>>>working with people who are needy in both an emotional and physical
>>>>>sense, itt is absolutely not as easy as giving them money for food
>>>>>each month. Talk to me one on one if you want to know what it looks
>>>>>like to try and quote unquote "help" someone with schizofrenia or a
>>>>>personality disorder.
>>>>>
>>>>>In addition, I am currently taking a class on universal media design
>>>>>at the local state university. The principles of the class have to do
>>>>>with  making media and web sites accessible to everyone, whether they
>>>>>are using an old computer on a dial up connection, using a smart
>>>>>phone, the latest and greatest computer with whatever internet
>>>>>browser, they are hard of hearing,  or a use a screen reader. Despite
>>>>>its principles though, I have had to do a lot of self advocacy. They
>>>>>have us learning about java script from on-line clips that do not
>>>>>provide enough information for me to keep track of what is happening
>>>>>in the visual part of the training. Someone asked me to give feedback
>>>>>on the web site for the business association of downtown Denver in
>>>>>preparation for the AHEAD conference here this summer. It is all in
>>>>>flash, and I was unable to get any content off of it. The business
>>>>>association doesn't feel particularly obliged to change their web site
>>>>>at all, even if it also means that people out for the night cannot
>>>>>pull up their site on a smart phone. The conservative principle is
>>>>>that economic forces will convince them to change it, but they aare
>>>>>not yet terribly interested. Along the same lines, the web sites at CU
>>>>>are often times poorly designed to the extent of decreasing
>>>>>accessibility, but as a whole group of sites are looking at being
>>>>>redesigned in the next couple of years, the man in charge of it
>>>>>doesn't know the first thing about concepts such as the W3 standards.
>>>>>I met with him and showed him a bit about what makes his current site
>>>>>that he manages difficult to navigate with a screen reader. Maybe he
>>>>>will be motivated to learn more, butthus far people outside of
>>>>>disability services at the university have been pretty apathetic with
>>>>>regards to making accessibility improvements to sites. All of this is
>>>>>just to say that I don't tend to find that the best ideas win out; too
>>>>>many people are caught up in the concept of how things have always
>>>>>been done and "it works for me, so it's fine."
>>>>>
>>>>>With all of this having been said, I vote we stick with putting
>>>>>concepts out there without needing to label them as being part of one
>>>>>group or another. I am all for innovation, change, and progress. No
>>>>>political group gets to lay claim to those words and my use of them
>>>>>does not put me in any one group.
>>>>>
>>>>>Amelia
>>>>>
>>>>>--
>>>>>Amelia Dickerson
>>>>
>>>>
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